Color Neg to Pos Conversion - Blue Cast

[JLNims]

How do you know the true colors anyway with negative film?

Does it matter as long as it looks OK to the eye?

Personally Alan, unless one is photographing for color technical reasons, I don't believe any of this matters as long as it looks good to the eye. After all, you liked the colors I got in that last attempt; and so did I. In a capture-type photo (which is 99.99% of all photos taken by all of us), good, non-clipped color that represents the items in the pic are all that matter. That last attempt produced just that. By no means am I trying to show a perfect 650nm wavelength of red for instance. I'm just wanting a red with good separation from other colors such as in the stripes of the US flag. But whether the wavelength is 650 or 652 nm, I don't care in the least.

Apologies for the rather long 'splanation here, but I really do think we need to separate the concept of true wavelength vs. just color. And my pain killer medication just kicked in, so I no longer have any idea to what I am referring to anyway.

[Alan Klein]

Personally Alan, unless one is photographing for color technical reasons, I don't believe any of this matters as long as it looks good to the eye. After all, you liked the colors I got in that last attempt; and so did I. In a capture-type photo (which is 99.99% of all photos taken by all of us), good, non-clipped color that represents the items in the pic are all that matter. That last attempt produced just that. By no means am I trying to show a perfect 650nm wavelength of red for instance. I'm just wanting a red with good separation from other colors such as in the stripes of the US flag. But whether the wavelength is 650 or 652 nm, I don't care in the least.

Apologies for the rather long 'splanation here, but I really do think we need to separate the concept of true wavelength vs. just color. And my pain killer medication just kicked in, so I no longer have any idea to what I am referring to anyway.

First, I hope you're not driving with the pain medication.

Second I agree that it's all up to the photographer's eye. Unless you're trying to get colors to match let's say a garment color for an advertisement, I figure if it looks good to me then it will look good to others. I never compare the original colors on a positive slide with the results after editing the scan. First off, the color palette of the film was just some Japanese engineer who's probably dead by now. It was his preferences the way they engineered the film palette. This is my art and preferences, so I don't have to match his.

[JLNims]

First, I hope you're not driving with the pain medication.

...First off, the color palette of the film was just some Japanese engineer who's probably dead by now. It was his preferences the way they engineered the film palette. This is my art and preferences, so I don't have to match his.

Nope I won't drive in that condition . Your last statement, in my mind, is spot on - and yes, he's probably dead by now.

[Ultrachrome]

Greetings all,

I know the negative to positive conversion topic has been discussed ad-nauseam. But this is a bit different. Please stay with me on this one. I scanned the neg with a Nikon D7200 with the neg on an LED light table into Capture One version 22 (latest). Then I exported the tif to Affinity Photo for processing. Here are my first steps:

1. Bring in the color negative MF0226_Neg.png below

2. Sample the rebate color to remove the orange cast (MF0226_rebate) and create a fill layer filled with the rebate color. Then change the fill layer blend mode to divide which yields MF0226 Neg and Rebate below. The rebate has been neutralized leaving only a negative without the cast.

3. Then I use the Invert command from the Adjustment Layers which flip the neg to a pos (MF0226_Inverted).

NOW here is the problem: I have an overall blue cast that cannot be balanced out.

I did process this Ektar 100 film at home using CineStill chemistry. The chemistry was new and just mixed. I checked and rechecked my mixing volumes and temperatures - all OK.

Any ideas?Attachment 226810Attachment 226811Attachment 226812Attachment 226809

Well...this is likely to be controversial...

IMO, the only answer to getting great inversions is to use a dedicated film scanner but if you must do DSLR digitizing of color negatives, Negative Lab Pro is your best option right now. Even at that though, you might find that time you're saving doing the actually digitizing, you might be losing in editing to make your images look great or how color negative film was intended to look when printed onto RA-4 paper. Even our Phase One Cultural Heritage system with the dedicated Capture One Cultural Heritage software which has a tool for film inversions of color negatives, doesn't do the same job as even our Fuji SP-3000 scanner let alone our Creo scanner but at least the Capture One inversions are more easily editable to look good. This film inversion tool is only available with the Cultural Heritage version of Capture One which only works with a Phase One camera system so unfortunately, others can't use it.

I've spent a huge amount of time over the last two decades trying to figure out how to make DSLR inversions look great. I first started trying to do this with a Kodak DCS 760 pack in the early naughts. I have also had worked with Phase One to try to get the inversions looking right. In the end, we suspect it is because of the Bayer Pattern of the DSLR sensor that creates issues with the reds after the inversion is done. I call them lipstick reds as when you get you neutrals in, the reds are off and have a sort of lipstick color to them. You can to some degree alleviate this with a color mixer and mucking with the luminance and hue of different channels but it's a headache and never quite right.

My apologies to anyone here who is happy with the results they're getting and all the power to these people but doing a great DSLR color inversion is indeed a very challenging thing. A DSLR will get you through a lot of work quickly and is great for B&W negatives, okay for color slides and acceptable to many if not most for color negatives but having color negatives look great, is an extremely challenging affair with a DSLR.